Brook Osborne, Prof. Susan Rodger, Wynne Lok, Camelia Pierson Eaves, Rachel Harris, and Akshatha Kommalapati were among Duke's participants at GHC 2012

The Department of Computer Science made its biggest showing ever of students this year at the 12th annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

Twenty-three students traveled to Baltimore to attend the October 3-6 conference, named for Navy rear admiral Grace Hopper, who was a computer science pioneer. Last year the Department took 15 students to the gathering, which is designed to increase the visibility of women’s contributions and to allow for networking and mentoring. Early last fall women who had taken a CS course in the last two semesters were contacted about the conference and about how to apply to attend with departmental support. More than 30 undergraduate students applied.

“We picked out 15 and said, ‘OK, we’ll just have to figure out how to take them,” recalled Professor Susan Rodger, who helps organize the annual trip. CS Department Chair Carlo Tomasi approached the Pratt School of Engineering to help with funding, since five of the selected undergraduates are enrolled there. In the end, the Department of Computer Science, Pratt and Yahoo! all contributed to make it possible for 16 undergraduates and six graduate students to attend; another undergraduate student received a scholarship from conference-sponsored funds.

“Many of these women are in computer science classes with small numbers of women, and I have taught at least one course that had only one female in the course,” Rodger said, noting how grateful all the students are for the funding and opportunity to attend the conference. “It’s so invigorating for them, because they see there are lots of women interested in computing. They are not alone.”

Doctoral candidate Susanna Ricco, who has helped push for more female students to attend the annual conference, said she still thinks about the time several years ago when she attended a workshop at Duke to explore possible collaborations with Cisco. At the start of the meeting, the group was told where to find a restroom. Then the man speaking turned to Ricco and said, “Oh, I didn’t even think of where the women’s bathroom was.”

Ricco agrees that in addition to the technical talks and career mentoring programs offered at Grace Hopper, it’s important for women to meet with other women in computing. “Suddenly there are 3,000 women who are all in computer science instead of like five of us,” she said.

This year’s conference — with the theme “Are We There Yet?” — drew about 3,600 participants. Among them were Rodger, Professor Owen Astrachan, CS National Director of Outreach Brook Osborne and Undergraduate Program Coordinator Camelia Pierson Eaves. Rodger gave a talk on how to apply to graduate school, and students and staff worked an information booth to recruit women to Duke.

The Grace Hopper exhibit hall featured many companies that don’t visit Duke’s career fairs, so the opportunities for the students to network were great. A few who attended are now receiving offers or interviews for summer or permanent jobs. Sophomore Zanele Munyikwa received a summer job offer from Dow Chemical. Another undergraduate seized the opportunity to approach a conference award recipient -- Cathi Rodgeveller, founder of a group called Inspiring Girls Now in Technology Evolution (IGNITE) -- and strike up a conversation. That encounter eventually led to a DukeEngage independent project for the Duke student, working with K-12 students in Nigeria this coming summer. IGNITE is a non-profit organization launched in Seattle as a local effort and now working worldwide to encourage girls of all ages to explore careers in technology fields.

Rodger noted the progress she has seen just through the yearly conference, which originally was planned to take place every three years and drew only about 500 women to its first offering in 1994. “But in our department at Duke, we’ve had three women faculty for 18 years and have not been able to increase that number,” she said. “We’re there in some ways, but we’re still not there in other ways. There’s still a need for the conference.”